Angela Atkinson – författare

Swindon is a story of two towns rubbing along together, not entirely happily, until they were joined together by royal charter in 1900 by Queen Victoria. The Old Town grew gradually over the centuries as an insignificant Wiltshire market town. But that all changed when Isambard Kingdom Brunel built his locomotive repair works for his Great Western Railway nearby and transformed the whole area. The works opened in 1843 with the GWR Railway Village built nearby to accommodate the first influx of workers. Swindon became one of the largest railway engineering complexes in the world and the New Town grew rapidly during the nineteenth century. During the twentieth century Swindon attracted new industries and although railway engineering has disappeared today, the town remains a major hub and commercial centre in the south of England.Swindon in 25 Streets tells the history of this fascinating town through 25 of its most interesting and important streets. Through the years, the streets have witnessed significant events, attracted remarkable people and been home to notable buildings and the stories of these streets are part of the story of the town. The book will be of interest to all those who live in Swindon or who have an interest in the area.

The sprawling urban conurbation that is Swindon began life as an Anglo-Saxon defensible settlement atop a limestone hill. Old Swindon would likely have remained a sleepy market town were it not for the Industrial Revolution. The subsequent acceleration in Swindon’s growth began with the construction of the Wilts & Berks Canal in 1810, though the real transformative factor came between 1841 and 1842 with the historic decision by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Daniel Gooch to establish their Great Western Railway works in Swindon, leading to the birth of a new town: New Swindon.Today’s Swindon is a surprising, multilayered, creative hotspot that is home to artists and writers of every genre and calibre. In Secret Swindon, author Angela Atkinson explores some of the lesser-known episodes and characters in the history of this Wiltshire town, bringing to life tales of those who have lived in it and the places they inhabited.

Swindon’s unusual history as a large industrial town in the heart of Wiltshire has defined its townscape for the last 200 years. The town is largely the creation of the nineteenth century, built around the Great Western Railway’s Works, but it nonetheless has over 600 listed buildings, not to mention scheduled monuments and three registered parks and gardens.In Swindon in 50 Buildings, local author Angela Atkinson examines not only such well-known Swindon landmarks and areas as the GWR Railway Village Conservation Area and the Old Town, but also everyday buildings that reveal aspects of Swindon’s always fascinating and surprising story. It is inevitable that many of the buildings in this book reflect Swindon’s great railway heritage, but others are small stories written in brick and stone that tell of a time before the railway came and changed everything. There are farmhouses now engulfed by twentieth-century housing estates and grander buildings such as Lydiard House. Rebuilt in the eighteenth century with a formal park, the Lydiard estate served as both an American army camp and prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. The story continues to the present day with buildings designed by such well-known architects as Hugh Casson, the creator of the Wyvern Theatre, and Norman Foster, architect of the landmark and award-winning Spectrum Building. It includes, too, the most recent of Swindon’s additions to the listed building’s register – and it’s one that will surprise you.